Going Public: Overcoming the Foundation Transparency Challenge

Join United Philanthropy Forum and Foundation Center for a webinar focused on how to improve foundation effectiveness by increasing philanthropic transparency. While many of us generally agree that transparency is a virtue, figuring out how to assess and improve existing foundation transparency practices can be a challenge. Attend this webinar to learn about free tools that are designed to help philanthropy work more openly, efficiently and effectively.

This program will begin with a compelling case for greater transparency; provide an overview of powerful and free tools designed to help you improve the transparency of your foundation’s online presence; demonstrate how you can easily assess your foundation’s online transparency practices (how will yours stack up?); and highlight examples from foundation peers who have been active in creating greater openness at their foundations.

Why should you make this a priority now? Though calls for greater transparency and accountability in the philanthropic sector are nothing new, now as people access greater quantities of information online, public expectation is rapidly growing about what information is made available. And today’s reality is that transparency and openness are not only trending, but revolutionizing the world around us. From user experience designed websites to Twitter to LinkedIn to the explosion of the blogosphere, shared networks and open data are transforming the way we shop, learn, and connect with each other. Is philanthropy getting left behind?

Attend this session to learn how these same forces can be used to make philanthropy more open, participatory, and informed by relationships with grantee partners and the communities they serve.

Attendees will:

Explore the importance of transparency to contributing to greater foundation effectiveness.

Learn how to approach achieving greater openness and transparency in a step-by-step way.

Examine how to design your foundation website with transparency and openness in mind.

Learn about the Glasspockets initiative and tools designed to help foundations assess and benchmark transparency practices, and how to create a free, customized transparency report containing strengths and areas for improvement.

Become inspired by peer practices implemented by grantmakers working to improve transparency at their foundations.